Friday, July 31, 2020

Rewarding Desires

Alma 41:5 The one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good according to his desires of good; and the other to evil according to his desires of evil; for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh.

I have a small concern with this. The thing is, people can have multiple, conflicting desires. I know firsthand that people can simultaneously have desires for good and desires for evil. Granted, one of those desires will usually outweigh the other, like how someone's desire to be patient may or may not outweigh their desire to be rude in a given moment, but both desires are still there.

I'm sure that the desires we act on are more important than the desires we try to reduce or ignore. Perhaps it's the desires we act on that get rewarded (for good or evil), not merely the desires we have. It may be important to emphasize that Alma said "for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh" (emphasis added). Maybe it's the doing of our desires that's actually important.

I think it's important to act on our desires for good and to not act on our desires for evil. As long as we're human, we will have both kinds of desires, and we will have to decide which desires we act on and thus which desires get rewarded.

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